Ethiopia has made remarkable progress to improve the WATSAN situations of the country by adopting the Universal Access Plan (UAP) in 2005. It aims to provide access to safe drinking water for all rural and urban population of the country before the end of 2015 (MoWE 2006). This was an ambitious target to be realized. Ethiopia’s UAP defines the minimum standards for rural population as at least 15 liters of water for every one per day within 1.5 km of their home. Although the government is playing a key role in the rural water supply schemes, the role of NGOs and its development partners have been crucial since the government does not have the financial resources and/or the technical capacity to undertake this radical and ambitious move alone. To increase access to safe drinking water in rural areas and to provide 15 liters of water per day for everyone within 1.5 km radius, several on-spot springs protection, normal hand dug wells, and hand dug wells with pump ropes have been constructed in many rural areas (MoWE 2006). As most of these water supply points fail to function just after their installation, sustainability
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issues become a major challenge in the provision of safe water supply in rural areas. For instance, a survey of water source points in rural Ethiopia found that 29 percent of hand-pumps and one- third of mechanized boreholes were not functioning mainly because of maintenance and repair problems (UNDP 2006). The 2012 National Water Inventory (NWI) report also indicates that more than 93,000 water schemes across the country were non-functional. Moreover, studies in Ethiopia indicate a strong relationship between rural water supply functionality and governance (Welle & Williams 2014). To make the matter worse, most existing community water sources are often contaminated with fecal materials and pose a high public health risk (Amenu et al. 2014; Atnafu 2006; Jano 2007; Tsega et al. 2014).
The WHO/UNICEF JMP for WATSAN defines access to drinking water and sanitation in terms of the types of technology and levels of service provided. The WHO sets five basic indicators for a safe water supply such as water quality, quantity, cost or affordability, continuity, and coverage or accessibility. Table 3-1 shows the current WHO/UNICEF JMP classification of improved or unimproved WATSAN technologies. This definition of access to ‘improved’ water source, however, does not consider the safety or quality of the water; subsequently, it does reliably predict neither the microbiological nor the physiological quality of the water being consumed. As this approach can be highly misleading, it is argued that inclusion of water safety parameter will further reduce the coverage level of improved water sources reported by JMP due to the high risk of microbiological contamination (Bain et al. 2014; Godfrey et al. 2011).
Table 3-1: JMP Classification of drinking water source types and sanitation facilities Category Types drinking-waters sources Types of sanitation facilities
Improved Piped water into dwelling, yard/plot, Public tap/standpipe, Tube-well/borehole, Protected dug wells, Protected spring, and Rainwater collection
Flush/pour-flush to piped sewer system/septic tank/pit latrine, ventilated improved pit (VIP) latrine, pit latrine with slab and composting toilet
Unimproved
Unprotected dug wells, Unprotected spring, Cart with small tank/drum, Tanker truck-provided water a, Surface water (river, dam, lake, pond, stream, canal, irrigation channel) and Bottles water b
Flush/pour-flush to elsewhere (that is not piped sewer system, septic tank or pit latrine), pit latrine without slab/open pit, bucket, hanging toilet/hanging latrine, shared facilities of any type and no facilities, bush/field
a Normally considered being “unimproved” because of concerns about the quantity of supplied water. b Considered to be “unimproved” because of concerns about access to adequate amount of water, about inadequate treatment, or about transportation of the water in inappropriate containers.
Source: WHO/UNICEF (2010b).
The WHO/UNICEF report presented in Table 3-2 provides some evidence on the status of microbial water quality in Ethiopia at the national level. The result shows that, of the 1602 water samples analyzed for thermotolerant coliforms (TTC), 1153 of 1602 (72%) samples met both the
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national standard and the WHO guideline value of <1 CFU/100ml water. However, 7 percent had counts of 1−10 CFU/100ml water, and another 14 percent had counts of 11−100 CFU/100ml water. Overall, 7 percent of all samples had counts >100 CFU/100ml water. The proportion of 11−100 CFU/100ml and >100 CFU/100ml water count is significantly higher for protected springs and protected dug wells but it is lower for utility piped supplies because they are better protected than other water source points. Utility piped supplies are also often chlorinated which protects the water from microbial contamination (WHO/UNICEF 2010a).
Table 3-2: Compliance of drinking water sources in Ethiopia for thermotolerant coliforms a Count
category (CFU/100ml)
Utility piped
supplies Boreholes Protected springs
Protected dug
wells Total Prop. (%) Prop. (%) Prop. (%) Prop. (%) Prop. (%)
<1 87.7 67.9 43.3 54.8 72.0
1-10 4.2 9.9 10.0 11.0 6.9
11-100 6.4 16.9 29.2 21.3 14.3
>100 1.8 6.2 17.6 12.9 6.8
Sources sampled (n) 838 290 319 155 1 602
a CFU=colony-forming unit. Prop. = proportion of water samples showing corresponding count category. Source: Adapted from WHO/UNICEF (2010a, p.21).
Few studies in Ethiopia examine the chemical and microbial quality of drinking water. Existing studies related the water quality aspects with seasonality, type of water sources, and storage behavior. Amenu et al. (2014) investigated the microbial water quality of rural households in Lemu and Siraro districts of Oromia region. A total of 233 water samples collected from household’s drinking water (126 collected during dry and 107 samples collected in wet seasons) were analyzed. The study finds that about 55 percent of the samples were contaminated with
E.coli; however, the concentration of E.coli was much higher during the wet season than the dry
season.
The issue of seasonality and water quality was addressed in other studies. For instance, Sandiford
et al. (1989) examined 150 water samples from rural Nicaragua for the fecal coliforms
contamination during the dry and wet season. Seasonality seemed to be less evident as water quality was more likely associated with the type of water sources. The study reports that piped water connections were free of fecal contamination. Interestingly, the fecal coliforms counts in unprotected riverside wells and springs were lower as compared to protected dug wells during the dry season. Despite that protected wells in most countries were less contaminated from fecal coliforms, the authors argued that the possible explanation for this finding might be related to the structures of the unprotected wells. While the unprotected wells were shallower and served several families leading to a rapid turnover which would remove the contaminants
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(decontaminates itself) frequently, the protected wells were emptied only once or twice a year (Sandiford et al. 1989).
Other water quality assessments based on water sources typology indicated that the quality of drinking water is highly influenced by water source types. In particular, Haylamicheal & Moges (2012) studied the physiochemical and microbial quality of the water for 28 randomly selected community water sources (14 on-spot springs and 14 dug wells fitted with a hand pump) in Wondogenet district of southern Ethiopia. The study found that water quality met the WHO drinking water guidelines in terms of pH, temperature, fluoride, chloride, and turbidity but not the standard for total and fecal coliforms. Of the total sample, 25 percent of water sources were contaminated with E.coli while more than 85 percent the samples were contaminated with total coliforms.
In addition to types of water sources, existing studies also emphasized the role of storage behavior on water quality at the POU (Clasen & Bastable 2003; Crampton & Aid 2005; McGarvey
et al. 2008; Rufener et al. 2010; Baker et al. 2013). Among the earlier studies on water quality,
Clasen and Bastable (2003) report that 92.2 percent of storage drinking water were contaminated with fecal matters, and using the case of Bamoko, Mali, Baker et al. (2013), the quality of drinking water was highly affected by household storage behavior although most households had access to piped tap water, mainly due to lower concentration of free residual chlorine below the required level during the storage period.
Studies show that water collection container and water handling practices also affect household water quality. A study that aims to examine the relationship between water handling practice and microbial water quality in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, finds that 34 percent of the samples were contaminated with fecal coliforms out of the 127 total water samples tested (Crampton & Aid 2005). POU water samples were more contaminated with fecal matters (37%, n=54) than water samples from sources (33%, n=72). The study has also shown that ‘dip’ methods of water storage, such as bucket and clay vessel, is more prone to frequent contamination but contamination level is lower as compared with ‘pour’ methods of water storage such as jerrycan and jug. Narrow- mouthed storage containers are the safest method of water storage but it may be often difficult to properly clean them after emptying. They usually store bacteria in the ‘biofilm’ and allow micro-organism to grow on their surface. Crampton and Aid (2005) therefore suggest that “either a covered bucket with a floating cup used simply to decant water into another glass for consumption; or a large yet handheld jug with a lid which can be raised for cleaning” could be a better solution.
Generally, the microbial quality of drinking water substantially deteriorates along the chain from source to mouth after collection from improved sources (Clasen & Bastable 2003; Rufener et al. 2010; Wright et al. 2004). Clasen and Bastable (2003) examined the level of thermotolerant coliforms (TTC) for 100 storage drinking water samples and 20 water source points from which
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the households draw their drinking water in the Kailahun district of Sierra Leone. The authors find higher TTC loads both at the point of unimproved sources and at household storage. Moreover, 92.9 percent of water samples from storage were contaminated with fecal matters although there were no detectable fecal coliforms per 100ml water samples from improved water sources. Rufener et al. (2010) found similar results in Bolivia. The authors analyzed 347 water samples taken from different water source points, transport vessels, treated water and drinking water cups from 81 households, and the findings indicate that fecal contamination (E.coli) of drinking water considerably higher along the chain from the water sources to the drinking cups. Furthermore, Wright et al. (2004) arrived at the same conclusion after systematically reviewing studies on microbial contamination of water between source and POU. In summary, existing empirical studies suggest that, since water quality is often compromised during household collection, transportation and storage, water quality protection at the POU should be as highly emphasized as at the point of source (POS).
3.3 Methods and Data